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Further Workplace Health and Safety bosses will be grilled at the inquest into the Dreamworld disaster today, after a leading inspector admitted he had "no confidence" in the emergency procedures in place on the Thunder River Rapids ride.

In 1980, when 17-year-old Daryl left his NSW Daruk ‘training’ school, he fell in with crims and robbed a bank.

I have often sat in criminal courts at sentencing hearings and heard the tragic stories of the defendant in the dock pleading for mitigation on his or her sentence because they had it tough in a government home as a kid.

When interviewing outlaw motorcycle gang members for books on bikie organised crime, I was frankly sceptical to hear the same story time and time again about how the abuse they had copped in a borstal or a reform school hard-wired them for crime.

But to hear what Daryl says happened to him and so many other boys at Daruk Boys’ Home (also known as Daruk Training School) near Windsor on the outskirts of Sydney between 1960 and 1985 turns all my prejudices on their head.

“From the moment I left Daruk, it was a downward spiral,” Daryl told 60 Minutes.

“I hated everyone. I wouldn't trust anyone. I'd strike first, ask questions later. I ended up going to jail. My life couldn't have sunk any further than that.”

As a young teenage boy, Daryl was sent to Daruk on the promise that its strict discipline would help him see the error of his ways as a young juvenile offender.

He never had a chance.

He was made a state ward from his infancy because of parental abuse and neglect.

Throughout his childhood, he now alleges, he suffered horrendous sexual and physical abuse in almost all of the institutions in which he was homed in the years before he arrived at Daruk.

But nothing prepared him for the unspeakable cruelty of what he says was inflicted upon him there.

Daryl Stanton speaks with Ross Coulthart. (60 Minutes) (60 Minutes)

When Daryl sat down and told us on camera what happened at Daruk, there was a huge pregnant pause at the end of his interview, as if something had just exploded to suck all the air out of the room and we were all caught in the aftershock.

Everyone listening was reeling from what he had revealed.

We all put ourselves in the place of that scrawny little boy who says he was frequently sadistically beaten, often for no reason at all, by violent government staff. It is the allegations of sexually deviant abuse though which are especially disturbing.

Everyone who has been through their teens knows the vulnerability of early adolescence; we all squirmed in the certain knowledge of how it must have felt for Daryl to be sexually assaulted by trusted government staff, as he alleges he was on multiple occasions.

But the worst injustice of all, the moment that transformed Daryl into an angry and - on his own admission - a violent young criminal for a few brief years, was what he says happened when he tried to complain to Daruk’s management about the physical and sexual abuse.

He says that specifically because he complained, he was sent to the Daruk isolation or punishment cell known as ‘The Boob’ where boys were kept in solitary confinement for days.

There he says he describes being forcibly stripped naked by a group of senior fellow inmate Daruk boys known as the ‘Dingos’. He claims that as a senior staff member - to whom he had complained - watched on he was beaten by the Dingos, breaking a rib, and that he was then sexually assaulted.

He was not given medical attention for the injuries he suffered and the assaults have left him with lifelong medical problems. The emotional wounds will likely never heal as well.

The Daruk Training School was established as a government training school teaching young offenders new skills. (60 Minutes) (60 Minutes)

Daryl’s state ward file, which he kindly shared with us, tells a grim life story.

He became a state ward after, as an infant child, he was found wandering around his family’s Sydney backyard by neighbours; he was unsupervised and blistered from the sun, as his father was off drinking and gambling.

At the age of nine he was sent to a children’s home in Sydney’s Woollahra, and this is where he says the systemic sexual abuse in government-run homes first began.

Daryl says the first time it happened, a senior staff member at the home took him aside and fondled his genitals. It paralysed him with fear.

A week later a traumatised Daryl tried to take his own life, looping his leather belt through a toilet cistern and passing out.

His file acknowledges this attempt but no staff member seems to have asked why he tried to kill himself.

A memorandum comments: 'He would not say another word on the subject…I did not press him. I thought it best not to make much of it'.

Even today, it is difficult for Daryl to speak about it. He claims that as a nine-year-old he was too terrified to reveal what had happened. If only a more compassionate staff member had pressed the issue and exposed the abuse at that early stage.

There were some government welfare officers who recorded their concern for Daryl along the way, but no one back then ever seems to have investigated the possibility that he was acting out because of systemic physical and sexual abuse.

In 1980, just before Daryl went completely off the deep end as an armed robber, his state ward file records how; "Daryl has been considerably emotionally damaged by his past. His needs have never been adequately met…"

It acknowledges that Daryl spent twice as long as he should have at Daruk because of his "disruptive behaviour" there but there is no mention of the abuse he says he frequently suffered.

Just months before he robbed the bank, his file records: "Because of his lack of satisfactory community support and his own increasingly entrenched delinquent behaviour, his prognosis would appear extremely gloomy."

Yet time and time again in the government state ward file the clues are there.

Daryl is described as "resentful of authority" and of "showing a complete disregard for himself, others and the property of others…and the law as a whole". Each time though he is sent back to another institution – and in almost every government institution, Daryl alleges he was frequently abused. In the attitudes of the day 40 years ago, would he have been believed?

One of the most disturbing allegations Daryl makes is that when he was about 13 he was sent to Albion Street Remand Centre in Sydney’s Surry Hills on a shoplifting offence for about six weeks.

While there, he claims he was drugged and taken out of the centre illegally by pedophiles who raped him repeatedly.

He believes this must have been done with the collusion and support of some of the people managing Albion.

It is an incredible allegation that is impossible to verify; curiously, all the records of Albion Street Remand Centre have been destroyed.

In the file though there is a note a few months later, soon after his admission to Daruk, about his disturbed behaviour. It damns Daryl as aggressive, violent and prone to "telling lies to get himself out of trouble".

Daryl would no doubt suggest that this is an implicit reference to the blind eye he accuses Daruk’s management of turning to his abuse after he complained about it.

Until a NSW Police strike-force began investigating allegations of abuse at Daruk two years ago, Daryl always assumed no one would listen to his claims or take them seriously. Now they are.

Police are believed to have spoken with nearly 100 former Daruk children about alleged abuse. The dam broke during the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse as boys, now middle-aged men, found the courage to come forward with their allegations in private hearings.

The evidence suggests that the potential number of victims of such institutional abuse across Australia runs well into the thousands. This was a social tragedy and criminal scandal that occurred right under our noses, where children were placed in institutions that clearly allowed them to be preyed upon by pedophiles – even when those kids complained.

It beggars belief that this was ever allowed to happen, or that those in power could claim that they did not realise it was going on.

Volume five of the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse’s massive report gives some information on the scale of the allegations made by former child residents of religious and government institutions.

Over one year to May 2017, at least 6875 people gave evidence of sexual abuse in an institution during private sessions (the final figure was expected to be 8000).

One in three of those survivors testified that they were abused in an historical form of out-of-home care, such as a children’s home, mission or reformatory.

Some 551 survivors gave evidence of abuse in youth detention centres like Daruk.

But, as Daryl told 60 Minutes, he was abused in multiple government homes and the Royal Commission’s figures bear that out: more than one in five survivors have testified they were abused in multiple institutions.

Lawyer Jason Parkinson, from Porters Lawyers in Canberra, is now acting for many former inmates of government homes. He says: "These institutions were a paedophile’s paradise. It was systemic right through. These are groups of paedophiles who looked at each other as fellow travellers."

This is what NSW Police are now seriously investigating.

The abuse has left Stanton with lifelong medical and emotional problems. (60 Minutes) (60 Minutes)

The Royal Commission report - which, sadly, has largely been ignored by the mainstream media since its publication - makes a key point about what happened when the children in these institutions complained: "This was especially the case for children who were in the ‘care’ of the state. Survivors described being ‘seen and not heard’, and that their disclosures of sexual abuse were ignored, disbelieved and dismissed."

That is exactly what Daryl says happened to him and countless other boys who complained about their abuse.

When Daryl was just six-years-old his state ward file records one compassionate government officer observing: "…it would be a miracle if Daryl ever recovered from the damage already done to him in his young life".

This was almost certainly a reference of course to the abuse he had suffered in his own family home, which had justified the decision to make him a ward in the first place. But little did the writer know how prescient that observation would be in hindsight.

The miracle happened. The wonderful thing about Daryl is that he proved his detractors wrong and changed his life.

He credits the love of a good woman, Phyllisse, now his wife, with turning his life around.

Ironically, it was adult jail that straightened him out – an experience he says was far less brutal than the children’s homes.

While in custody, Daryl studied design and that won him a job in theatre design when he was released from jail. He ended up working in television and then the restaurant industry.

The boy the government officers had damned as of low-intelligence and for whom little hope was held now studied maths and history. On leaving jail, Daryl was ready to start a new life:

“When those big doors opened and I walked through I just threw myself into work.”

So many of Daryl’s fellow travellers in government institutions like Daruk were lost along the way to drugs, alcohol or violence.

Most never got out of the system.

When we interviewed Daryl at the old site of the training school adjacent to what is now the John Morony Correctional Centre at Windsor, he looked across at the nearby prison walls and sadly observed that many of the boys with whom he suffered in silence in Daruk were now lifelong prisoners inside that jail, locked into a cycle of reoffending and more prison.

Daryl’s big break came, ironically, when the NSW Corrective Services Minister Rex Jackson, later jailed for taking bribes, released him early from prison.

A few months after he became the minister in charge of New South Wales jails, Jackson gave himself the extraordinary power to select which prisoners could be released earlier – ostensibly on compassionate/public interest grounds.

60 Minutes reporter Ross Coulthart. (60 Minutes) (60 Minutes)

History records that some of the decisions Rex made under this prisoner early release scheme were corrupt.

Federal Police bugged underworld figure Frank Hakim discussing with Jackson how much it would cost to spring three of his marijuana-growing cronies out of jail in 1983.

I was covering state politics the night Rex went down; police had caught him cold, watching intermediaries delivering cash bribes straight to Jackson’s office. The corrupt old rogue was led away in handcuffs and sent to jail himself.

But Daryl’s release from prison - he was facing a very long stretch of prison - was likely one of the few times that Rex ‘Buckets’ Jackson did the honourable thing for a prisoner under his care.

Since his release, Daryl’s been a law-abiding and successful citizen.

Daryl actually ran into Rex years after he and the former minister were both out of jail.

Rex was selling ice-creams from an ice-cream and hot dog van. As Rex handed him his ice-cream, Daryl realised who he was and said "Thank you" repeatedly, looking the former New South Wales jails minister right in the eye.

He thinks there may have been a flash of understanding on Rex’ part that this was a youth he had set free years earlier.

Four decades on, Daryl is truly a success story, a self-made businessman driving an AMG Mercedes and sailing a yacht on Sydney Harbour, all obtained through honest toil.

Forty years on though, the pain from his alleged abuse is still obvious. That is why Daryl made the decision to come forward with his abuse allegations to the recent Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse and that is why he is also now a witness in the growing NSW Police case against the alleged abusers of Daruk.

Daryl Stanton wants those men held to account – the men who turned the training school that was meant to rehabilitate him and other boys into a school for crime.

If you or anyone known to you has any information at all about child abuse at Daruk Training School aka Daruk Boys’ Home, please contact CrimeStoppers on 1800 333 000.

If this story has raised issues for you, there are people who care and are ready to listen.